Special Windows setup required for fast encoding?

[ayfa]

Hi there,
at first, I want to give an overview of my current pc components:

Asus P5B deluxe
Intel Q6600 @ 3GHz
4GB DDR2 1066MHz RAM
Seagate SATA 1TB HDD
Samsung SATA 250GB HDD
ATI X1800XT 256MB
LG BluRay/DVD combo

Software and OS:
Vista Business
AutoMKV + required software
Browsers
Nero
IMGBurn
...
...
...


Since I bougt a Western Digital TV box, I thought it would be a good idea to rip my BluRays and encode them to X264 MKVs, and sell my PS3, which I basically used to watch BluRays.
Well, a week ago, I used a E6300 dual core CPU @ 2.8GHz.
I read a few things about AutoMKV and I wanted to try it myself. So I converted my first BluRay. I chose auto crop only, x264 single pass fastest, set it to 18000MB (236minute film) and encoder showed a frame rate of ~ 9fps. Qualtity was ok, only dark scenes were a bit noisy from time to time. So I thought, make it in 2 passes. But it would have taken too long, so I didn't even try with the dual core CPU. I went to a local PC part dealer, bougt a Q6600 quad core CPU, set it to 3.00GHz and started a 2 pass balanced job. Then I got shocked. There was no fps gain in the first pass... Ok, don't know the problem -> reinstall OS:rolleyes:. So here I am, just installed Vista, nothing else installed yet, just updates. In what order should I install software to make sure, system is set up right? Are there special settings I have to apply to make the quad core CPU use all cores when encoding? Because while encoding the first pass, I barely have 50% CPU utilization. Can't believe I can't get more than lousy 8-9fps.
Any special or recommended settings for encoding BluRays to MKV @ 1920x1080 ->autocrop? I'm kind of tired of experimenting the whole week.
Any help is welcome.

[Adub]

First of all make sure that you have the latest version of x264. Secondly, when using the new b-adapt method for b-frame analysis, sometimes you will have reduced cpu usage, as it still has not been fully optimized for multithreading (I think). At this point, you will actually see the biggest gains in the second pass. That will be when you quad will start to kick in. I have had second passes that were faster than my first pass with my quad actually.

Unfortunately there really isn't a way around it at this time, besides splitting up your movie in to at least two chunks and running two encodes at the same time. Personally, I don't mind it that much, as I still get ridiculously fast encodes anyways. Another thing that may be the problem is that your decoder isn't decoding fast enough.

Especially when encoding Bluray, we are often limited by our encoders. Take a look at ffdshow-mt, coreavc, or the new divx codec. Another option is to use the Nvidia accelerated version of DGAVCDec.

[Dark Shikari]

Especially when encoding Bluray, we are often limited by our decoders. Take a look at ffdshow-mt, coreavc, or the new divx codec. Another option is to use the Nvidia accelerated version of DGAVCDec.Fixed that for you.